As Crisis Unfolds, Educators Balance Intricate Demands

Within minutes of the worst terrorist attack in the history of the
United States, the reverberations rippled through the nation's
classrooms. School leaders agonized over whether to send students home
to their families or to keep their buildings open—as one
reassuring sign of stability in an unhinged world.

Even outside the targeted cities, districts from Philadelphia to San
Francisco suspended classes, postponed football games, and called off
field trips last week, some out of concern for students' safety, others
as a sign of respect for the victims.

Parents raced to schools to hold their children close. Students and
teachers made frantic calls to friends and relatives they feared were
working in or near New York City's World Trade Center or the Pentagon,
just outside Washington. Hijacked jetliners smashed into those two
workplaces the morning of Sept. 11, transforming them into scenes of
devastation.

In New York, Washington, and their suburbs, armies of counselors
were mobilized for dispatch to schools as students returned to their
classrooms late last week.

Administrators closest to the attack sites took varying paths to
ensure their students' security and sanity. But the assaults also put
new demands for crisis management on other American school systems.
Now, they were teaching urgent lessons about acts of terror and hatred.
Educators also prepared for the possible aftermath for students: from
feelings of fear, grief, anger, and depression to bomb threats or
retaliation against classmates.

"Sometimes I think that the entire burden often falls upon a school
district," said Marleen Wong, the director of the Los Angeles school
district's crisis teams. "It's a mixed blessing."

While most U.S. educators have few experiences to draw on in responding
to the scale of destruction unfolding last week, guidance on dealing
with catastrophes abounded from national school security experts and
Oklahoma City school colleagues still haunted by the 1995 bombing of
the federal Alfred P. Murrah Building.

Consistently, they advised school leaders to preserve as much of the
normal routine as possible—a stabilizing signal to
children—and to trust their instincts.

Jerry D. Weast, the
superintendent of the Montgomery County, Md., schools outside
Washington, meets with principals to plan for reopening schools
last week following the terrorist attacks.
—Allison Shelley/Education Week

Sally R. Cole, the principal of Emerson Secondary School in Oklahoma
City, said that even if schools aren't immediately at risk, officials
must gauge the emotional temperature of their communities.

"If you find that the community is in such a state that they need
their children home with them, then you need to close the school and
children should go home," she said.

As clouds of ash and debris engulfed Lower Manhattan the day of the
attack, all but seven of the New York City schools, which serve 1.1
million students, remained open. The District of Columbia, with 67,000
students, also kept classes running. Administrators locked their
campuses, reasoning that children would be safer at school.

"We did not want to send a million children out in the street," said
Catie Marshall, a school system spokeswoman in New York City, where
some children spent the night at their schools because parents were
unable to reach them.

Both districts were wary of sending children to empty homes as the
disaster unfolded live on television. They also were reluctant to
release children who may have lost a parent or relative in the
attacks.

Profound Confusion

But staying in school wasn't easy on a day of profound
confusion.

One elementary school principal in Arlington, Va., where smoke
billowing from the Pentagon could be seen from the playground,
restricted her students to the second floors and above. The extensive
glass on the first floor—potentially lethal to small children in
a blast—was too dangerous, she said.

In Washington, teachers at Ben W. Murch Elementary School struggled
to relay information about the situation to their students. The
teachers fielded probing questions and helped calm rattled nerves. Some
read from scripts prepared by district officials outlining the facts of
the attacks.

After hearing the news from her teacher, 6th grader Gabriella Abate
became increasingly frightened as more and more of her friends left
campus early with their parents. At lunch, Gabriella and her friends
ducked under a table when they heard a plane fly overhead.

"I didn't really know what was happening," she said. "There were
only six people left in my class."

Most Maryland schools released students early, reasoning that it was
a time that families would need to be together. But elsewhere in the
Washington area, in the capital's Virginia suburbs, the thinking went
differently.

Kitty Porterfield, the spokeswoman for the 160,000-student Fairfax
County, Va., district, said officials there could see from a quick look
at their television set that roads out of Washington were already
clogged with people fleeing the Pentagon blast.

"When we dismiss, we put 1,200 buses on the road," she said.
"Considering the congestion already on the road, and the fact that many
of our parents work in the District [of Columbia], we knew that if we
sent our kids home, they would go home to empty houses. The kids were
really safest in school."

Fairfax County school leaders received news of the attack as they
sat in their weekly 8 a.m. meeting. Only 45 minutes after the first
plane hit the World Trade Center, they had decided to keep schools
open. That decision was followed by a series of others, each an answer
to a question raised at the table.

Do we have any field trips today in New York City or Washington? No.
But all local field trips were canceled. What about child care? Hours
were extended, with the unspoken understanding that teachers would stay
as late as necessary for all children to be picked up. What about
after-school and evening activities? Not considered crucial, they were
canceled.

On the West Coast, where some residents initially feared additional
attacks because all of the hijacked planes had been scheduled flights
to California, the 62,000-student San Francisco schools shut down. But
the Los Angeles Unified district's 730,000 students, many of whom had
watched the terror unfold on television before they came to school,
stayed in class.

"We cannot be paralyzed by inaction or fear," Los Angeles
Superintendent Roy Romer wrote in a memo circulated to all school staff
members the day of the attacks. "This is what terrorists hope to
achieve. As the cornerstone of a democratic society, schools educate
children. It is crucial that we continue in that mission."

Additional security officers were dispatched to Chicago's schools to
seek out "suspicious activity," while Cleveland closed its campuses the
day after the attacks to acknowledge a day of mourning. Students in
Broward County, Fla., were barred from watching television, sparing
them from a barrage of images from the disasters.

American flags outside the nation's schools were lowered to
half-staff. Outside the entrance to Georgetown Preparatory School in
North Bethesda, Md., hung a sheet emblazoned with the words: "God Bless
America."

Changing Course

By the evening of Sept. 11, even districts that had stayed open had
begun to revise their approach to the next day.

New York City suspended classes to give staff members time to devise
strategies for helping students still reeling from the events. District
leaders huddled in closed-door meetings with city officials,
principals, counselors, and others to hash out the detailed plans.

In a mammoth conference call Tuesday night, emergency-management
officials and leaders of the District of Columbia schools and those in
nearly a dozen surrounding school districts decided it would be best to
close on Wednesday. Without knowing if there would be further attacks,
officials believed it safest for students to stay home. They also
wanted to make the hundreds of school buildings available for emergency
shelters if necessary.

But the chief reason for closing schools was the need for mourning
time, officials said.

"Flags are flying at half-staff for a reason, and our schools were
closed for that same reason," said Brian J. Porter, the spokesman for
the 136,000-student Montgomery County, Md., schools.

By last Thursday, most schools had reopened, but the day was far
from routine. New York City schools opened two hours late, allowing
teachers to be trained to cope with their shell-shocked students'
needs. Schools in Lower Manhattan below 14th Street remained closed as
rescue crews searched for survivors in the mountains of rubble at the
site of the World Trade Center.

James A. Kadamus, the deputy commissioner of elementary, middle, and
secondary education for New York state, said retired teachers might be
called into action to replace educators who lost family members in the
assaults.

Schools in Washington and its Maryland and Virginia suburbs had
teams of crisis counselors on standby. Returning to the lessons
abruptly halted by the violence of Sept. 11 was a Herculean task: The
tragedy's impact became all too real as some desks went empty.

Three District of Columbia teachers and three students were killed
on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.

A student at Gonzaga College High School, a Roman Catholic school in
Washington, lost his mother, a flight attendant, on the same plane.

In suburban Chappaqua, N.Y., Principal Kenneth Mitchell attempted to
quell early rumors among students at Bell Middle School that as many as
seven students had lost family members. No losses had been confirmed
late last week; instead, there was good news that several loved ones
had been evacuated or not present at the time of the attacks.

Duck and Cover

While the attacks caught an entire nation off guard, schools are
better prepared to manage crisis situations than they were 20 years
ago, said Ronald D. Stephens, the executive director of the National
School Safety Center in Westlake Village, Calif.

Mr. Stephens predicted that school districts will tighten security,
but cautioned that each community must determine what action to take to
make campuses safer without turning them into "armed camps."

In addition to responding to the immediate emotional needs of staff
members and students, districts must be prepared to anticipate "spinoff
incidents" from the assaults, said Kenneth S. Trump, the president of
the Cleveland-based National School Safety and Security Services.

Bomb threats will likely crop up on campuses, he said, and Muslim
and Arab-American students may become the target of hateful comments.
School officials must become more aggressive about monitoring students'
comments and behavior to prevent the escalation of such taunts into
violence, he said.

The disasters also will prompt districts to review and revamp their
existing crisis-preparedness plans, Mr. Trump said, as many did
following the bombing in Oklahoma City or the Columbine High School
shootings in Jefferson County, Colo. Districts that have "plans for the
sake of having plans," he added, will likely adjust that approach.

He stressed that most school systems need to review their plans to
prevent violent incidents on their campuses and determine "how well
prepared they are to manage the incidents they can't prevent." Such
preparation includes assigning key personnel to specific roles,
including communicating with parents, talking to children, and putting
security precautions in place.

Ann M. Allen wasn't thinking about prevention when a powerful blast
blew the windows—and their frames—from Emerson Secondary
School in Oklahoma City in 1995. Her school was two blocks from the
Murrah Building.

Despite having crisis plans, Ms. Allen said her instincts kicked
into overdrive seconds after the blast. "So many people are depending
on you, so for that reason your supervisory and leadership skills rise
to the top," said Ms. Allen, now an area administrator for the
40,000-student district.

Ms. Cole, who is now the principal of the school, said her first
thoughts were for the safety of her students and staff.

"We go into this survival mode," she said. "You can't afford to feel
that sorrow or pain or devastation if you're going to do what you have
to do right now for the children in the building."

Last week, the memories of the Murrah Building's destruction became
too vivid for some to bear at Emerson. Some people, overcome with
sorrow, went home. "It's almost like having third-degree burns," said
Ms. Allen, who lost six friends in the bombing. "Every time you get too
close, you feel the heat from the match."

It was that same searing loss that touched countless Americans after
last week's violence. A blanket of shock and grief descended, muffling
many schools.

John Williams, the admissions director of Thayer Academy, a private
secondary school south of Boston, walked across campus at pickup time
on Tuesday of last week. Usually, it's an occasion for boisterousness
and chatter. But on that day, on the lush green lawns far from the
disaster sites, everything was different.

"I have never," Mr. Williams said, "heard silence like that in my
life."

The events of Sept. 11 have had a deep impact on many schools and
children. Share your experiences, reactions, and encouragement with
with other readers. How has your school or district responded? What are
the ongoing issues? Submit your comments to our special readers' forum.

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